


The Third Path

by queenofthecorner



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bisexual Harry Potter, Companionable Snark, Dark Arts, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, F/M, Female Harry Potter, Friendship, Good Severus Snape, Harry Potter is a Horcrux, Harry is NOT the Master of Death, Hermione Granger & Severus Snape Friendship, Hermione Granger is a Good Friend, Horcrux Hunting, Lily Evans Potter & Severus Snape Friendship, M/M, Magical Experiments, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), One-Sided Lily Evans Potter/Severus Snape, Past Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Remus Lupin Needs a Hug, Ron Weasley is a Good Friend, Severus Snape Being a Bastard, Severus Snape Has a Heart, Sirius Black Being an Idiot, Slug Club, Spell-craft, The Fidelius Charm, The Prince's Tale, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:47:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27425941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofthecorner/pseuds/queenofthecorner
Summary: Clarity Potter doesn’t want to die. And when she finds a time-turner in Dumbledore’s office, she reasons she might not have to.Together with Ron and Hermione, Clare takes the horcrux hunt all the way back to 1976 hoping to save as many people as she can, hopefully up to and including herself.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Severus Snape, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, James Potter/Lily Evans Potter, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 7
Kudos: 50





	The Third Path

Finally, the truth. The answer to the question she'd never been brave enough to voice.

The relief was swamped by the sharp sting of hurt. Betrayal.

She had trusted Dumbledore. She’d believed in him, in his plan. Sometimes when no one else had! And this was her reward for that faith? That loyalty?

She was just supposed to walk out of here and die without a fight?

How dare he just—

And Snape!

Clare had never been so conflicted about a person in her entire life.

Snape and her mother had been friends. As if that wasn’t revelation enough, they’d been good friends, best friends. Snape’s worst memory had been of the day he destroyed that friendship with a few unthinking words. Snape had _loved_ her mother.

Granted, it had been a desperately unhealthy and obsessive kind of love, but it had also proved true.

He’d protected Clarity for years because it was what her mother would have wanted despite his blind hatred of everything she represented.

He’d defied the Dark Lord for that love. He’d died for it, in a way, and she didn’t think he’d regretted it in his last moments.

Snape had been a brave man.

Maybe braver than her.

How many times had he walked out of this office sure that he’d be facing death on the end of Voldemort’s wand?

Clare had only been asked to do it once and she didn’t think she could.

She’d spend her short, brutal life tethered to this one moment in time. Her destiny. And now that the time had arrived for her to go out and meet it with all the courage of her house…

She blew out a hard breath and scraped her greasy hair back from her face.

Her heart was pumping hard, as if it knew that her time was drawing short and it had to pump twice as hard just to keep her alive.

All those times she thought she was going to die, all those times she’d narrowly escaped…

She almost wished she’d been killed that night in the graveyard, that she’d fulfilled her destiny without ever having to _know_ about it.

It was so much harder, knowing that if she wanted to complete her mission she was going to have to walk out of this castle, into the Forest and let Voldemort kill her.

The worst part was it could all still fail.

Even if she went. Even if she died. There was still the snake.

Nagini would still need to be destroyed before Voldemort could be killed and she wasn’t going to stand still and be murdered the way the other horcruxes had been.

And then there was Voldemort himself, still a powerful wizard, skilled duelist, and a cunning foe. It would be no picnic to kill him before he could run off and make another horcrux and only Ron and Hermione knew what needed to be done.

She loved her friends dearly but she’d had a front row seat to the duel between Voldemort and Dumbledore in the Department of Mysteries. They were no match for Voldemort. In twenty years, Hermione would no doubt be an even more terrifying force of nature but they didn’t have that kind of time.

Snape was supposed to be the one to kill him, probably, maybe even with the Elder Wand, though poison or a quick curse to the Dark Lord’s turned back would have worked in a pinch. The potion’s master had been ruthless and sly the way that most of the Order was not. He was like Dumbledore in that way. Willing to do whatever it took.

But Snape was dead, Dumbledore was dead, Hermione was seventeen and there was no _time_.

She only had twenty minutes before Voldemort would be back on the offensive. Tearing the castle apart stone by stone to find her and killing everyone he found first in a fit of black rage.

Because, like Dumbledore, he believed he knew her.

He believed that he’d offered her a choice that was not a choice.

That she’d sooner die than run and leave her friends, classmates and allies.

He was right.

They both were. Damn them to hell for it.

Clare couldn’t just save herself. She had to save everyone. Or at the very least, more people than she lost.

She’d been maneuvered very neatly into place. Her whole life, every one of her choices, moves on a gameboard she’d been to stupid to see. And now the game was ending. This whole situation was just Voldemort’s check and Dumbledore’s inevitable post-humous checkmate.

There was no way out.

Abruptly Clare wanted to tear through Dumbledore’s office for the second time in her life.

Snape had left everything more or less the same. She wanted to vent some of the helpless rage that was welling up within her, to hurt Dumbledore the way she was hurting.

How could he do this to her?

There was no place for that anger to go, and no time to feel it in its fullness.

She had a job to do.

A destiny to fulfill.

She left Snape’s memories in the pensieve and shoved the thrice-damned thing back into the cabinet.

She intended to slam it shut behind her when a little twinkle of gold caught her eye.

Clare swallowed thickly as she realized what she was looking at and several things became clear.

Nested into a larger disc was Hermione’s little golden time-turner. And it was in this cabinet because it wasn’t a ministry device and hadn’t been destroyed in the time-room, because it had never been returned to the time-room because it had never been given to Hermione by the ministry.

Because it had been given to Hermione by Dumbledore.

It all fell into place.

Who would give a thirteen-year-old witch a time-travel device to _take extra classes_? No one. It was ludicrous. No one would ever believe that Hermione wouldn’t abuse the privilege. No one except Dumbledore, who had taken the time to know Hermione as he’d known Clare.

He’d known that if Sirius Black had managed to murder her before her destiny could be fulfilled that her best friend, a witch who revered rules right up until she didn’t, would definitely go back in time and save her.

How many more clues would reveal themselves now that Dumbledore’s plan had been explained to her and she could see the gameboard underneath her feet? How many more small betrayals?

Unthinkingly she reached for the disc.

It came off it’s stand easily enough, the little hourglass wobbling in the centre.

The two discs that had made up Hermione’s time turner were now ringed by five more, like the rings of Saturn, able to spin along the middle axis.

A suspicion was rising up inside her.

“Minutes,” she said aloud, under her breath. “Hours, days, months, years, decades, centuries.”

She tapped each ring, counting them out, and sucked in a breath when she saw she was right.

But it couldn’t be that simple, could it?

If Dumbledore had owned something like this he would have gone back in time before this, stopped Voldemort from ever becoming.

Wouldn’t he?

Clare thought of what Hermione had told her on the banks of the Black Lake as she argued about why they should go and save her parents…

 _Bad things happen to those who meddle with time, Clary_.

Had Dumbledore been worried about his own well-being? Or had he not wanted to risk venturing into the unknown when his own scheme was so well-laid?

She’d probably never know.

But she had a chance to know other things.

Like how she’d feel on her eighteenth birthday, for example.

She could retreat to the past, re-group.

She knew where she could find each of the horcruxes. She knew what needed to be done to destroy them. She could do it. She could give herself more time among the living. Maybe decades more, if Voldemort could be discorporated early enough.

She could save a lot of people. People who died in the first war and people who’d died in the years since Voldemort’s return. Her parents, Sirius, Remus and Tonks…

Maybe she could find a way to move the soul piece inside her to another vessel.

She just needed more time.

And in her hands was all the time she could ever want.

Her hour was almost up, but that didn’t really matter, did it?

She needed to talk to Hermione though, before she did anything else.

She bit her lip.

She’d come into Dumbledore’s office almost an hour ago, she needed to slip out before her younger self slipped in.

One turn should do it, she thought, laughing a bit.

While her younger self learned about her fate, she would have the time she needed to talk to Hermione.

She pulled at the chain until it was long enough to slip the time-turner over her head.

Then she carefully took the axel of the discs and flipped the second ring once.

All at once the world blurred as though it was on rewind and Clare closed her eyes against the riot of sound and color until finally the sensation stopped.

She opened her eyes to Dumbeldore’s empty office and the empty frames of the portraits.

In her ears Voldemort’s cold voice echoed at he spoke his ultimatum to the air in his high, cold voice.

“ _I speak now, Clarity Potter, directly to you. You have permitted your friends to die for you rather than face me yourself. I shall wait for one hour in the Forbidden Forest. If, at the end of that hour, you have not come to me, have not given yourself up, the battle recommences._ ”

Clare feeling particularly defiant, shrugged on the Invisibility Cloak and left Dumbledore’s office before he’d finished speaking.

“ _This time, I shall enter the fray myself, Clarity Potter, and I shall find you, and I shall punish every last man, woman, and child who has tried to conceal you from me. One hour._ ”

She’d run here to escape the grief and death that clogged the Great Hall, but there was no time for that now. If she didn’t want those bodies laid out on the floor to exist, she’d have to do something about them.

Clare waited until she saw her younger self run past, her wild hair whipping behind her like a banner as she dashed the familiar route to the Headmaster’s office.

Only then did she take off the cloak and duck into the Great Hall.

Ron and Hermione were standing together, a little apart from the rest of the Weasleys.

Clare was grateful.

She didn’t think she could face Mrs. Weasley right now. Or George.

Instead she came up to her best friends and touched Hermione on her arm to grab her attention.

“Clary!” Hermione said, throwing her arms around her.

“We were afraid you’d gone off and done something stupid and reckless without us,” said Ron, a breathless laugh spilling out of him.

“I kind of did,” Clare admitted. “We don’t have a ton of time, but I need your help.”

“This way,” said Hermione, ducking into the antechamber, where once, all those years ago Clarity and the other Triwizard Champions had gathered.

“You’ve thought of a way to get to Voldemort, the snake?” said Hermione all in a rush.

“What’s the plan, mate?” Ron asked.

“That’s the part I need help with,” Clare said. “I watched the memories Snape left for me. Dumbledore’s plan, our mission, it’s not what we thought.”

“What do you mean?” asked Hermione, frowning.

“Voldemort has another horcrux, other than the snake.”

“Bloody hell,” sighed Ron, scrubbing at his face, resigned. “Do we know what this one is at least?”

Clare gathered her courage. Once she said it out loud there was no taking it back.

“It’s me,” she breathed quietly. “The last horcrux is me.”

Ron and Hermione went white under all the grime.

“You’re sure?” Hermione said after a long moment, her voice small.

“Yeah.”

“No,” said Ron, his hands were shaking. “Absolutely not! Haven’t we lost enough people? You can’t—”

His voice broke.

“You just can’t.”

“It’s the scar isn’t it,” said Hermione. “The connection. The one You-Know-Who made when he tried to kill you as a baby.”

Clare nodded.

“His soul is unstable, after having lost so many pieces. One part just broke off from the whole when his body was destroyed and latched on to the only life in the room…or so Dumbledore thought.”

“Dumbledore was wrong!” Ron bellowed. “He’s got to be!”

“Ron,” said Hermione in a watery voice. “I don’t think he was. Think about it. It all makes perfect sense.”

“Oh, yeah, perfect sense, except that it means running our best mate through with the sword of Gryffindor or poisoning her with a basilisk fang or toasting her with bloody fiendfyre! It means she needs to die!”

“Maybe not,” said Hermione. “We can try and kill the horcrux without killing Clare. There must be a way. I-I’ll do more research, there are journals in the Black Library—”

“There’s not enough time, Hermione!” Ron snapped. “The Death Eaters have us surrounded. And even if we do escape here, You-Know-Who knows what we’ve done. It’s only a matter of time before we have another bloody horcrux to hunt down!”

“Well what do you suggest, Ronald?” Hermione snapped back. “We’re not just going to kill our best-friend!”

“Guys!” Clare shouted. “We don’t have a whole lot of time to work with, but I have an idea.”

“If it’s going out to the Forest alone you can just forget it Clarity Potter!”

“Too right!” agreed Ron.

“I’m not going to lie and say it wasn’t my first thought,” Clare said. “But then I found something in Dumbledore’s office.”

Clare pulled the time-turner out from the neck of her shirt.

“Is that—”

“As it turns out, Mione, your timetable in third year was probably not ministry approved.”

“You’re time travelling right now,” Hermione said. “That’s how you went through Snape’s memories so quickly.”

“I’ll be up in Dumbledore’s office for most of the hour, so it seemed like the perfect time,” Clare said. “This time-turner is different. It’s got more rings. I think it can turn back decades of time. If we use it, I think we can change things, really change things.”

“Fred?” asked Ron in a croaking voice.

“And a lot of other people too,” said Clare. “If we do it right.”

Hermione was several steps ahead of her, as always.

“1966 would be earliest we could go unless we planned to assassinate Tom Riddle as a child,” she said, pacing the room. “Any earlier and we risk changing things too much. Not knowing where all the horcruxes have been hidden. It’s risky though. You-Know-Who was more powerful then. His army was larger.”

“He looked like a normal bloke and not a raving, snake-faced loony,” Ron put in. “To hear mum and dad tell it, he convinced a lot of pure-bloods and half-bloods over to his side with pure charisma.”

“Dumbledore said something similar,” Clare said. “During our lessons, that Tom Riddle was charming enough that people didn’t understand the danger until it was already too late.”

“The Order was founded by Dumbledore in 1971,” Hermione said. “A year after You-Know-Who declared himself openly.”

“We could join up,” said Ron.

“Maybe. Of course, that early on it’s possible that Lucius Malfoy and Bellatrix Lestrange weren’t yet his trusted lieutenants. If something happened to us and we weren’t able to get to the diary and the cup—”

“There probably won’t be many more chances,” said Clare.

“And every person we told would be just another person You-Know-Who could take the information from,” Hermione added.

“I’d bet that Riddle gave the diary to Abraxas Malfoy,” said Clare. “Lucius would never have used it the way he did if he’d known how important it was to his Lord.”

“Bellatrix would have just graduated Hogwarts in 1970 though,” Hermione pointed out. “He wouldn’t have entrusted her with the cup just then.”

“It could’ve been anytime after that though,” Ron pointed out. “She would’ve been married to Lestrange right out of Hogwarts, the old pure-bloods are all about arranged marriages. What about 1980? Right before his first fall. All the horcruxes would be in place by then.”

“That doesn’t give us much time before our timelines start crossing over with our younger selves, only a few months,” Hermione said. “If something happened, we could erase ourselves by accident. We have to be well rooted in the timeline before we’re born.”

“1976,” suggested Clare slowly. “It’s late enough in the war that the horcruxes will probably be in place, early enough to give us years before we’re born. We could go back to Hogwarts first, finish school, have access to the library, give Dumbledore a reason to approach us about joining the Order.”

Hermione and Ron paused to think about this.

“It’s incredibly risky,” Hermione said. “We’d need to lie to Professor Dumbledore about who we are and where we’ve come from.”

“No use trying to save Clare if Dumbledore is just gonna want to murder her straight off,” added Ron darkly.

“The fewer people who know about who we really are the safer we’ll be, at least for now,” Hermione said. “Bad things happen to people who meddle with time.”

“What would we need to make it into Hogwarts for September 1976,” Clare asked.

Hermione paced back and forth, considering.

“Money to start off with, I think we have enough in my bag but we’ll have to be frugal. We’ll have to write the OWL equivalencies under false names, and apply for Hogwarts for our NEWT level subjects. We’d be older than most of the other students but there’s precedent for it. You two would need to look a lot less like yourselves—”

“We’d need to get the Map away from your dad and his mates,” Ron added. “If they spot us on that thing the jig’s up.”

“Right, and we’ll need to learn at least some occlumency or something before we set foot in the castle…”

Hermione continued muttering very fast under her breath, and pacing.

Clare glanced down at her watch and was alarmed to see that their hour was almost up.

“Are you sure you want to come with me?” she asked.

Hermione and Ron exchanged a glance.

Hermione smiled a bit.

“Come on, Clary, you don’t think you can do this without me, do you?” she said with forced cheer.

Ron glanced back toward the hall where the Weasleys were gathered longingly. After a moment though he squared his shoulders and took Hermione’s hand.

“I’m not leaving you two again. Let’s do it,” he said.

Hermione’s face was overcome with an achingly soft expression.

Clare tried not to be too envious. Merlin knew, that Ron and Hermione’s road to romance had been filled with enough potholes and detours to make any sane traveler turn back.

“So, June 1976?” said Clare. “We’re all agreed? We don’t have much time.”

“It’s the best plan we’ve got,” said Hermione. “We need some sort of contingency plan in place though, in case we fail and this whole battle still comes to pass. Presumably, if Clare disappears from time that will destroy the horcrux within her but there’s still the snake…”

Clare bit her lip hard, thinking quickly.

Who could they trust to finish the mission?

“Kreacher!” she called.

It was clear that Kreacher had been fighting in the battle, there was a gash above his left ear that bled freely down the side of his neck and soaked into his ratty pillowcase.

“Mistress is needing Kreacher?” croaked the old elf, a distinctly bloodthirsty light in his big dark eyes.

“Yes Kreacher,” she said. “I haven’t got much time to explain.”

Kreacher gave her a dismissive snort.

“Why she bothers? Tis not an elf’s job to question orders from their mistress.”

Which was exactly the sort of attitude that led to the mistreatment of house-elves in the first place but now was not the time to get into it. Once again, the nature of house-elves was going to save them.

“In a moment the battle is going to start again,” Clare said urgently. “I need you to make sure that the Dark Lord’s snake is killed tonight. She is made of evil magic, like the locket Master Regulus asked you to destroy, you’ll need this to kill her.”

Clare fished the basilisk fang out of her pocket and handed it to the elf.

“Once the snake is dead the Dark Lord can be killed. If you need help you can trust Neville Longbottom, Luna Lovegood, or Ginny Weasley. Or the elf Winky,” she added after a moment of thought. “Her master, Barty, was taken from her because of the Dark Lord.”

“It will be done, mistress,” said Kreacher.

Hermione looked like she wanted to protest.

“He’ll make sure it’s done,” Clare said. “Everyone always underestimates house-elves but they have powerful magic.”

“I know you’re right, but he shouldn’t have to risk his life for us,” Hermione said.

“If we do this right, he’ll never even know we asked,” said Ron, squeezing her shoulder. “Let’s get this done.”

They gathered round in a tight circle and Clare looped the chain of the time-turner around their necks. She and Hermione pressed close against either side of Ron each holding one side of the dial. They spun the discs carefully on their axis twenty-one years and six months.

The antechamber off the Great Hall began to blur and speed by, worse than before. The noise rushing past was like a roaring wind and the world around them threatened to warp and melt.

Clare closed her eyes after a moment, dizzy and nauseated, clinging to Ron’s jumper to keep upright.

It seemed to go on for a very long time.

For forever.

Clare was half-way convinced at one point that they’d made some sort of error and were hurtling back centuries or millennia in time. Or worse, that the time-turner was broken and they’d be stuck here in this in-between place forever.

But eventually, the roar died down to a dull murmur and the world wobbled back into focus and Clare felt her feet on the stones of Hogwarts again for a half second before the time-turner made a noise like an angry tea kettle and flew to pieces in a blast of magic that sent them flying.

Clare’s head hit something solid, and her vision swam with spots for a moment before the world went dark.

**Author's Note:**

> Because Harry just deciding to go out and die without struggling always seemed a little off and because Ron and Hermione almost never get to go along on Harry's adventures when time-travel is involved. Also because Snape, Lily and all the Marauders need to grow as people. 
> 
> This is going to be typical Golden Trio adventure with the Marauders, Lily and Snape being dragged into their wake focusing on themes of friendship, family and second chances. There will be no bashing. Not even of Dumbledore. 
> 
> A note on f!Harry's name...I don't even know, I was looking at virtue names and it just seemed to fit
> 
> Hope you all enjoyed! Let me know your favourite bit or something you'd like to see happen in the comments below!


End file.
